October is now concluded, and with it my country visits to Singapore
and Malaysia.

I combined these two neighboring countries for the month of October
because of Singapore’s small size — just four universities
— and some common heritage between the two (Singapore was even
part of Malaysia, briefly, at one point). Here are some of my observations
of the library environment in each.

SINGAPORE

Singapore, as a small island-nation, is modern, highly developed and
highly educated. With ample tax revenue from commerce and per capita
incomes, the government invests heavily in its educational institutions
and libraries. Case in point: the public library network throughout
the island is unparalleled compared to other neighboring countries.
Singapore citizens have modern, well-stocked and automated public library
branches, quite similar to Orange County Public Library’s many
branches throughout the county. Singapore’s new
National Library building is a breathtaking addition to its public
library network (see the architecture at: http://www.ntu.edu.sg/cee/iccpm/site_visit.htm).

Regarding academic libraries, Singapore has four universities with
all the same modern library automation, facilities and services you
would find in UC or CSU libraries. There also are “Polytechnics,”
which are equivalent to our community colleges, and these have been
funded by the government to modernize their facilities.

This government commitment to education is clearly impressive. But
of course, there are always areas where improvements can be made. One
is school libraries. Surprisingly, elementary/secondary school libraries
are few, minimal and most often just run by a teacher part-time. This
is an irony. With Singapore’s impressive investment in public
and academic libraries, it apparently didn’t include school libraries
... and that’s really where the foundations of information literacy
skills begin. I met with officials of the national library (overseeing
public libraries) and there is some user education that exists at the
public library level. But it is more leisure/continuing education-oriented,
not tied to student academics. Thus, when Singaporean students arrive
at polytechnics or universities — even with high marks and analytic/computational
skills — they may often lack information literacy skills (those
defined by the Association of College & Research Libraries —
the ability to find information, critically evaluate it, etc.)

MALAYSIA

Malaysia, like Singapore, is investing heavily in education. From
the mid-1990s onward, there has been a major drive to upgrade colleges/institutes
into full universities and modernize them with high-technology. In fact,
just south of Kuala Lumpur is an area specifically created as a high—tech
Silicon Valley equivalent, called the Multimedia Corridor. However,
Malaysia has more of a challenge than Singapore — it has a much
larger population and more diverse economic levels.

Malaysia’s top universities have funding for many of the same
resources we are used to, e.g., databases like EBSCO, ProQuest, Emerald,
etc. Commercial OPAC systems (Innovative, Virtua, Geac, etc.) also abound
— in contrast to in-house systems found in Indonesia.

From my visits, I observed that library user education varies significantly
from university to university. At one university, library user education
was built right into the curriculum, where all entering freshmen take
a mandatory course of library/information literacy training (bravo!).
But at another university, there was essentially no user education —
just a brief new student orientation tour. The university’s (i.e.,
administration’s) valuation of library/information literacy seems
to be one factor, and the library director’s vision/commitment
another, on the degree of user education.

Obviously, these brief summaries of my Singapore/Malaysia visits are
only snapshots. There is so much more to each of their library environments
— that’s where compiling data into my laptop comes into
play!

I hope October was well for you all, and I’ll be back in touch
again at the end of November with my next country report.